One of the most esteemed composers of our day, Krzysztof Penderecki has evolved and changed over the decades of his acclaimed career. Perhaps best known for his searing 1961 Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (scored for 52 strings, full of tone clusters, glissandos, and never-before-heard effects that are unearthly and shattering), his six-movement Concerto grosso is yet another of his ground-breaking works. Penderecki had led a musically “sheltered life” in his native Poland, not being exposed to music from the beginning of the 20th century until the mid-1950s. He embraced what was new and showed himself to be adventurous in his own works. But when his career path took him to conducting he embraced (and composed) works that led him in new directions—or in the case of the present Concerto grosso—to old ones, working in a form that was at its height in the 17th century. He wanted “to gain inspiration from the past and look back on my heritage,” he said. The traditional concerto grosso pits a small group of players (the concertino) against a larger group (the ripieno) in a give-and-take musical conversation. Penderecki’s work does so, too; but the three solo cellos created their own give-and-take, with each one having its own personality. Cast in six movements, played without pause, the Concerto grosso beautifully fits the personality of the solo cellos, while the entirety of the composition moves from contemplative and lyrical to martial moods, from intense passages where the two groups are in conflict to an eloquent ending. Conductor Charles Dutoit, premiered the work, commissioned by the NHK Symphony—the national public radio orchestra of Japan—in Tokyo on 22 June 2001, with cellists Truls Mørk from Norway, Boris Pergamenschikow from Russia, and Han-Na Chang from Korea.